The present invention relates to equipment housings in and particular to a sheet metal housing for service station or automotive related vending equipment, such as for the delivery of air, water or self-sevice vacuum cleaning.
As the profit margins have shrunk in the service station industry and as the industry has evolved toward a self-service operations and full-service operations, a need has been created for vending equipment offering air, water or vacuum cleaning services to the average customer. While heretofore such services were commonly offered free of charge in a full-service operation, the cost thereof was typically made up for in higher priced fuel and services. However, because the cost for providing such services, due to lost time, has increased and because many operations are now self-service oriented (with attendant lower profit margins), it becomes much less economical for a service station operator to provide these services, free of charge.
Rather, it is more advantageous for the operator to make available these services to his customers via self-service vending equipment and for which a nominal charge is made. In the past, such vending equipment often was mostly encountered in car wash situations relative to vacuum cleaning, but now it has become economically advantageous to offer it in a wider spectrum of services and to a wider variety of operations. An example, too, of related air dispensing equipment can be found upon reference to U.S. Pat. No. 4,289,255.
As always, though, with any vending equipment that remains unattended for any length of time, the risk of vandalism is increased. Accordingly, it is desirable to surround such equipment with a tamperproof housing so as to discourage vandalism. While such housings can be extremely elaborate in their deterent mechanisms, the cost thereof can also become prohibitive, thus extending the payback period for the equipment, and therefore a need exists for a low-cost enclosure that delays entry, but during which delay the vandal can be detected.
It is therefore, a primary object of the present invention to disclose an economical, tamper-resistant housing which adaptively may be made to enclose such equipment in a fashion that will discourage vandalism.
It is a further object to employ redundant locking systems within such housing so as to separately lock the housing and equipment contents from the coin meter and coin vault.
The above objects and advantages of the present equipment as well as various others will, however, become more apparent upon a reading of the following disclosure with respect to the following drawings. Before turning attention thereto, though, it is to be recognized that while the present invention is described with respect to its presently preferred embodiment, various modifications and/or changes may be made thereto without departing from the spirit and scope of the present invention.